Profile: Michael Dorsett

Michael Dorsett was a participant or observer in the following events:

Norm Olson. Olson is wearing an ‘Alaska Citizens’ Militia’ shoulder patch as part of his pseudo-military garb. [Source: Political Carnival]Former Michigan Militia members Norm Olson and Ray Southwell concoct the idea of holding a “Third Continental Congress” to redress the problems they see plaguing the nation—problems they believe stem primarily from a conspiracy of Jews, liberals, and minorities to repress white Christians. Olson and Southwell were thrown out of the Michigan Militia after Olson told media representatives that the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) was engineered by the Japanese government in retaliation for the CIA’s supposed involvement in the Tokyo subway gas attack. Southwell envisions the Third Continental Congress, or TCC, to operate as a directing body for all the nation’s various militia groups, working together under the TCC rubric to “reestablish justice in America for all the people, whatever color they may be, or whatever faith system they may observe.” Southwell calls the envisioned dominance of the TCC “God’s will.” Olson says: “My goal is not to plan a revolution, for revolution will come. My goal is not to point fingers, lay blame, or find fault, for few doubt the crimes of the present de facto government. My goal is not to cast support to politicians or to shore up the broken machine that the federal government has become. Rather, my goal is to establish the Republican Provisional Government.” The first official TCC meeting, held in October 1996 in a Kansas City, Missouri, Holiday Inn, only attracts about a dozen delegates due to bad weather, though a few more arrive as the meeting wears on. Attendees include Sarah Lowe, whose husband currently heads the white separatist “Republic of Texas,” and Texas conspiracist James Vallaster. Southwell issues a manifesto calling for a Continental Defense Force, a repackaging of his original Third Continental Congress idea. The next meeting of the TCC occurs in January 1997 in Independence, Missouri, with nothing concrete being determined. Some TCC delegates, impatient with the inaction, decide among themselves to take some sort of decisive action. Several delegates, including Ronald Griesacker (a corrections officer, a well-known figure among militias, and a former Republic of Texas member), Kevin and Terry Hobeck (owners of an Ohio trucking firm), and Dennis and Ardith Fick, decide to form their own Continental Congress, which reportedly meets in Silver Lake, Indiana, in February 1997. One of this splinter group’s first members is Bradley Glover (see October 1995 and After), a Kansas militia member looking for extremist groups with an eye to violence. Other members include Thomas and Kimberly Newman, Michael Dorsett (a tax dodger and “common law” advocate), Merlon “Butch” Lingenfelter Jr. (a Wisconsin dairy farmer whose family believes a vast Jewish conspiracy runs most of Western civilization—see 1986), and, unbeknownst to the other members, several undercover officers of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who were at the January 1997 TCC meeting and were concerned about the radical statements of some of the splinter group’s members. In April 1997, the splinter members meet in Towanda, Kansas. Glover and Dorsett make increasingly fiery statements, impelling some of the other members to leave. The focus of the meeting turns to the idea of foreign, United Nations-led troops being housed at US military bases, presumably to help the US government crush the “patriot” militia movement and impose martial law. Later that year, Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League will write: “Allegations of such troops had been made so often and with such confidence in the patriot community that their presence was taken for granted by many patriots. Radio broadcaster Mark Koernke regularly spoke of hundreds of thousands of UN soldiers hiding in the United States, at military installations, in the national parks, and elsewhere. Indeed, the New World Order (see September 11, 1990) hardly seemed to bother with the effort of hiding them any longer.” The members that remain decide to take action. They determine to develop an arsenal of weapons and military equipment with which to attack government installations that are presumed to house foreign troops. They will hide in safe locations. The Hobecks sell their trucking firm to provide cash for the group, and travel to Colorado to establish a “base” at the Thirty Mile Resort in the Rio Grande National Forest. Others stage reconnaissance missions on military bases, including Holloman Air Force Base at Alamagordo, New Mexico. They station guards during the April and May 1997 meetings in Towanda, and even arm their children, who help patrol Glover’s farm. In June, Glover moves into Dorsett’s home in Arlington, Texas, in preparation for a strike on Fort Hood (see July 4-11, 1997). [Mark Pitcavage, 1997]

Entrance to Fort Hood, Texas. [Source: New York Times]Fort Hood, Texas, preparing for the annual “Freedom Fest” Fourth of July celebration, readies itself for a large crowd of local civilians planning to spend the day enjoying fireworks, marathons, concessions, military bands, carnival rides, and community activities. However, anti-government activists Bradley Glover and Michael Dorsett are captured by FBI and Missouri state police officers in Missouri before they can turn the festival into a massacre. Glover and Dorsett have become convinced that the United Nations is housing Communist Chinese troops at the military base, in conjuction with a “New World Order” conspiracy to invade and occupy the United States (see September 11, 1990). Glover, Dorsett, and others—all “splinter” members of an organization calling itself the “Third Continental Congress” (TCC—see Summer 1996 - June 1997)—are planning a multi-pronged attack on the Army base. Soon after, five others are arrested in conjunction with the plot. History of the Fort Hood Plot - Glover and other TCC members believe that the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) was a plot by federal agencies to gin up an excuse to persecute “patriot” organizations. Glover told British reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing that “it’s only a matter of time now before the shooting war begins.” He believed that the bombing would be followed by heavy-handed anti-terrrorism legislation that would see federal agencies attempt to violently eradicate militia groups, and in turn, those groups would violently resist. “If this thing goes down,” Glover predicted in May 1995, “there’s going to be an extremely large number of US military that’s coming to our side with their weapons. They’ll turn like a dog on a cat.” He believed the militias would easily defeat the government forces—“We can whip those guys. We can take out the so-called ninja wanna-bes. We’ll beat ‘em quick”—but worries that President Clinton will turn to the Chinese forces he supposedly has housed throughout the United States: “That’s what worries us,” Glover said. “Then we’re gonna be fighting big time.” Glover became known to federal authorities after his frequent interviews with reporters after the Oklahoma City bombing, and claims to lead groups such as the Southern Kansas Regional Militia and the First Kansas Mechanized Infantry. (In his “real” life, Glover is a part-time computer consultant.) When the expected crackdown failed to materialize, Glover became a national council member of a national “umbrella” militia group called the Tri-States Militia (see October 1995 and After) and then began associating with ever-more violent anti-government extremists. Glover, Dorsett, and a small group of extremists devise an extensive plan to strike at a number of government facilities and military bases, beginning with Fort Hood. Arrests - But federal and state authorities are well aware of their plans. At 6:15 a.m. on the morning of July 4, FBI agents arrest Glover and Dorsett in their tents in the Colorado Bend State Park. The two have an arsenal with them: two rifles, five pistols, 1600 rounds of ammunition, bulletproof vests, a smoke grenade, a homemade silencer, explosive material, a night vision scope, and other items. “Their explosives would have been more damaging to the personnel at Fort Hood than to the physical installation,” Missouri State Highway Patrol Lieutenant Richard Coffey later tells a Texas newspaper reporter. “They did not have the same philosophy as the people in Oklahoma City. They were not looking for a huge explosion to make their point.” Instead, they planned small, repeated explosions. Glover, charged only with weapons violations, posts bail and flees to Wisconsin, where he is quickly arrested again after another weapons charge is added to the original indictment. Dorsett is held on an outstanding federal passport violation. Fellow plotter Merlon “Butch” Lingfelter is later arrested in Wisconsin on July 10, while looking for Glover; he surrenders his two machine guns and two pipe bombs, but says, “I’m not trying to be a noble knight in this, but it’s time somebody somewhere does something.” Despite his defiance, Lingenfelter tells a reporter that the meetings held by Glover were merely social outings. Kevin and Terry Hobeck are arrested on July 10 in Colorado after giving two illegal automatic weapons to undercover police officers; Thomas and Kimberly Newman are arrested on July 11 in Kansas after Thomas Newman gives the same undercover officers a sack full of pipe bombs. Suicide Mission? - One law enforcement official believes that the group may have intended to die in the planned Fort Hood attack. “I think you have to have a warped sense of reality to think you can pull of a mission like that,” Missouri State Highway Patrol Captain James Keathley later tells a Denver reporter. “It sounds like a suicide mission to me. I don’t know if they could have pulled this off.” [Mark Pitcavage, 1997; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]Sentences - Glover will draw a seven-year prison sentence, and the others lesser terms. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

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